Paul McCartney Still Loves Linda’s Voice

Nearly 50 years after he began recording with her, Paul McCartney is still defending his late wife Linda McCartney against detractors who maintain she had no business behind a microphone. McCartney, who on December 7th with roll out super deluxe editions of Wings' first albums, 1971's Wild Life and 1973's Red Rose Speedway, explained to The Guardian, “On things like the song 'I Am Your Singer' (from Wild Life) — and, well, all of them — I really love Linda's voice. It's very distinctive and she sings well. I'm sort of listening for it being what the critics said — y'know: 'Oh, she's not very good.' But her tone is great. The decision to have Linda in the band singing was a tough one, because she's never sung professionally.”

McCartney felt an almost relief and moving forward with Wings starting in 1971, understanding, “Whatever we do, we're not going to do what the Beatles did.”

Wings co-founder and original drummer Denny Seiwell told us that Linda was always an integral part of Paul life and music, and was especially important to him after his split from the Beatles: “They were such a couple. The two of them together, it was just totally inseparable, and I'm sure that he just had to have her there. And I believe — from seeing some of this stuff that you've seen in the past years on TV, how he was just hiding away up there at the farm in Scotland when this Beatles breakup and all that stuff was going on — I believe she was the reason that pulled him out of a slump and got him back into activity again, musical activity, writing and appearing live and all that, forming Wings, and all that, and he just needed her there.” at Nagoya, Japan's Nagoya Dome.